Run,Run.
By Dennis Kurek

"Run, Run as fast as you can. You can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread man"

Of all the times to get a stupid nursery rhyme stuck in my head, I have to
be in a haunted spaceship in orbit around Tau Ceti.

My name is Gingerbread Man....I mean Paul.
Damn!

I almost have a security override on this XERXES terminal.

A few minutes more and we'll be safe.

Dodging mutants, killer monkeys, turrets that lock in and fire on you even
when you ARE wearing the proper badge.

I would think this is some kind of lame horror film IF ONLY I WASN'T IN IT!

I've done some dumb things before but this may be my last.

Sure I lied to get on board the Von Braun mission.

Who wouldn't?

With my hacking skills my friends and I changed the files of some of the
crewmembers and came on board.

I wonder if they ever figured out why they were transferred to the moonbase.

Oh well.

It wasn't that hard to arrange.

We had to downgrade our skills a little bit.

First rule of social engineering boys and girls, always say you can do less
than you really can.

It makes it easier to play the innocent when
you're caught in an area you don't belong.

Like poor Jones.

A level six PSI-trained hacker working in hydroponics shoveling manure
all day.

But his cover was the best of us all.

He is the only one besides myself I know is still alive in this hell.

He's watching for company while I TRY to hack this damn terminal!

I was lucky to be visiting him when THEY came.

When the shuttle returned from the surface of TAU CETI, that's when
things went wrong.

I was running a terminal, and had almost given our team full
access to all systems, when something swept through the computer
nodes like an evil wind.

I heard a woman's voice say "No you don't insect" and my terminal
was shut down.

I was running a 20-location hop so I couldn't be traced.

Whatever this was it looked through all 20 in about a second.

I don't want to meet this hacker.

I'm really good at what I do.

A 20-location hop would take me 15 min to search.

They found me so fast that it SCARED me!

This new terminal is finally coming up.

If I can get back to my XERXES takeover and get to the escape pods
I can put this horror behind me.

Almost there.

Wait a minute!

There seems to be something else controlling XERXES.

What is it?

It's trying to find me!

Over-ride!

Over-ride!

Nooooooo!

TERMNAL XC3243 REPORTS THAT 2 HUMANOIDS HAVE BEEN SUCKED INTO SPACE
WHEN THE AIRLOCK DOOR WAS OPENED IN THEIR AREA.
UNKNOWN ERROR FOR AIRLOCK OPENING.
ERROR CODE SHODAN.
UNKNOWN ERROR.
TERMINAL XC3243 SHUTTING DOWN
END